


the teal dream

by stindy



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Eventual Sex, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Previous Eye Trauma, Rating will change, Student Carl, Teacher Negan (Walking Dead), Teacher-Student Relationship, Tragic backstories up the ass, Will be Explicit, how else could you have two characters this fucked up in a high school
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-04 00:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13353069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stindy/pseuds/stindy
Summary: Carl's drowning in the veritable hell of a chaotic personality plus way too much trauma for a teenager. For some unknown reason, Negan decides to save him.Clearly, the guy has issues of his own for wanting to be 'friends' with a high schooler anyway, especially one as messed up as this, but Carl just has to know the reason. It's like an itch he can't reach far back enough to scratch, and as much as he wants to give up, he can't until he's satisfied with an answer.»»but if you love my ghost then you can still ride with me and my teal dream.





	1. drowning

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [the teal dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzZfRi64FKA) by darling

_Close your eyes, forget your troubles—you can ride with me and my teal dream._

An oddly specific brand of isolation thrives in high school pools. Hard to put your finger on it. Carl figured it had something to do with the chlorine-y smell, or the clinical feel that reminded him too much of time in the hospital, or the open, daunting space where public school systems required you to stand half naked and wait for instruction. Usually heat from the similarly uncomfortable and half-undressed bodies of those around provided some relief, but Carl was standing alone aside from the swim coach he was currently arguing with. Belatedly, he wondered if it would have been smarter to start the argument when he still had clothes on instead of shivering all vulnerable in distressingly small swim trunks, but it was too late to turn back now.

“I’m not letting you in my pool like that, Grimes. I don’t know what you want me to say, it’s not happening.”

Clusters of students were filtering out of the locker rooms, too deeply engrossed in their presumably mundane conversations to pay much attention to Carl. The goosebumps that seemed to have set up indefinite residence on his pale skin weren’t drawing as much attention as his brain was trying to convince him. With every hair on the back of his neck standing at attention, practically saluting the unnecessary conflict he was provoking, Carl couldn’t convince himself that the entire world wasn’t staring at him.

As the exchange between him and Coach Mueller got more hostile, though, it started to garner more attention from the kids who rarely listened to anything that wasn’t about them somehow. Their one deviation from that pattern occurred whenever drama was in question, and Carl Grimes making a stupid spectacle of himself would certainly keep the rumor-mill well-fed for long enough to warrant the nosiness that was starting to sweep across the class.

Such was the nature of high school, and Carl couldn’t exactly be mad at their self-absorption without risking some serious hypocrisy. He _was_ currently holding up an entire gym class for the sake of his pride; selfless tendencies didn’t exactly flood his being or anything.

“I won’t take off my goggles,” he replied emphatically after a long few moments of just glaring daggers at Coach Mueller, though he wasn’t actually sure if the dirty look he was aiming for was actually visible. The goggles obscured most of the outside view of Carl’s eyes (thankfully), and Mueller was trying to be subtle about how desperately he didn’t want to look at the kid’s face.

He was failing. Carl could have sensed the discomfort a mile away. It hung thick in the air, worse than Georgia humidity. Carl wanted him to choke on it.

“It’s a safety issue,” Mueller tried earnestly, essentially grasping at straws to avoid admitting the obvious. “For you and for others. Even if… it…” He struggled to find the words that couldn’t offend Carl.

Like much worse hadn’t already been shoved in the slats of his locker as an anonymous note that morning alone.

“If what?” Carl asked innocently.

Well, maybe not so much. It actually sounded more like he was trying to spit venom at Mueller than innocence, but innocence was what he had originally been going for. He didn’t fail to notice that more eyes began to burn at the back of his neck when he let his tone take that sharp turn.

Who was Carl Grimes to be talking to a teacher like that? Even if it was just Coach Mueller.

It was simple, really. Carl just wanted the guy to sack up and say it already. He hated the pathetic tiptoeing that adults couldn’t seem to steer clear of around him.

_Just say it._

“Even if everything is fully healed,” Mueller lamely chose to go with, “I have no proof that the chlorine isn’t going to be a problem or something. I don’t know. I told you, you need a doctor’s note-”

“I _don’t_ need a doctor’s note,” Carl cut him off dryly. His eyes narrowed—at least that was the way it felt like he was moving the muscles. Mueller still probably couldn’t catch any of the eye movements, but the icy element to Carl’s voice was probably conveying enough of what he meant. “I’m not freaking handicapped. Just let me in the damn pool already.”

If rising volumes during a fight with a teacher hadn’t been enough to get that nosy student body interested, Carl borderline swearing absolutely did the trick. A hush had more or less fallen over the other students—some wearing expressions of shock, others attempting weakly to conceal their joy over the tension, all huddled awkwardly in their bathing suits and waiting to be told what to do.

“I won’t tolerate that language in here,” Mueller grunted, his resolve to be a ‘nice teacher’ audibly disintegrating. “And I won’t let you talk to me like that, either. I don’t know if it’s _sanitary_ , I don’t know if it’s _safe_ for you medically, we don’t even have a _lifeguard_ on duty today, I don’t know how well you can  _swim_ without- well…”

“Without what.”

Carl wasn’t playing innocent this time, or even attempting to do so. The words came out like a snarl, and though they were technically phrased like a question, they didn’t sound like one at all. They were a challenge. He wanted to hear an adult tell the truth; this seemed like as good a place as any to take his stand. He held his head upright in part to make sure he actually looked as dangerous as he was trying to sound, but another part was all about this game of chicken he was playing with Coach Mueller, who was still refusing to look him in the eye.

“Your depth perception.”

Now Mueller was messing with him on purpose. Carl could feel that, deep in his bones, and he really, really, _really_ hated being messed with.

“Just say it!” he yelled, chest suddenly heaving and words far too loud, not even flinching when his voice echoed across the pool. “My eye?! My fucking eye, is that what you’re talking about?”

Pretty much no one in the vicinity had been talking anyway, but somehow, an even quieter silence had overtaken the students, prying little bystanders they couldn’t keep themselves from being. Carl was pretty sure he actually heard one kid gasp, which was wholly un-fucking-necessary if you asked him.

“Grimes. Office. _Now._ ”

Immediate regret washed over Carl, more than aware of how much trouble he would be in at home. With all the frustration coursing through his veins, though, he was having a hard time caring aside from the involuntary response of his stomach sinking like a stone when Mueller pointed toward the door.

“I’m not leaving this pool until you let me get in it,” Carl announced sourly. “If you want me gone, you’re gonna have to go to the office yourself.”

At this point, he had already done too much damage to not just go ahead and stick with it. No way was he making it out alive after his mom heard that he had dropped an F-bomb at a teacher. All the recent pity in the world toward her one-eyed freak of a son couldn’t stop Lori Grimes from losing her mind over that kind of improper and insolent behavior. She’d probably scoop out his other eye with an ice cream scoop if it meant she could be sure he’d never pull that crap again, and Carl knew it.

He was resolute in his decision, though; Mueller, on the other hand, seemed momentarily lost on the right course of action. None of his options were particularly ideal, thanks to Carl, and the kid clearly didn’t even feel bad about it. He didn’t get paid enough at all to want to deal with the crap Carl was currently pulling.

“Everyone stay right where you are,” Mueller demanded, walking backwards as he moved toward the door to ensure that everyone understood him well enough. “Don’t set foot, toe, or any other body part in my pool, or you’ll be in worse trouble than Grimes, got it?”

Carl thought to himself about the classy kind of teaching skills Mueller had to be employing at the moment to compare students like that as the man jogged away with the little whistle around his neck jingling like a house cat.

Suddenly hyper aware of how many of his classmates had to be looking at him, Carl slowly started to turn around. Standing half naked in front of your class was bad enough without having just thrown a hissy fit from the very same spot. Irritation was still flooding through his system, so when he heard a soft whisper that distinctly sounded like it contained the word ‘freak,’ he snapped again.

“Who was that?” he demanded. The goggles were a god-send again because without them, seventh period gym would be seeing Carl’s good eye look as crazy as his fake one. The limited vision from said good eye sought out the source of the sound before quickly settling on the likely targets. “Hey, asshole! Hey, shiftace!” he called to the two kids unsuccessfully hiding their giggles. “You got something to say to me?”

The shorter of the two boys looked scared for a moment, the amusement dropping from his face until the taller one broke out clumsily from between the students he had been behind in the group. The smile on the shorter one returned instantly, followed by a shout of, “It’s only the full $20 if you bring them back to me!” as the tall one took off running.

About a second later, Carl pieced together that the boy was charging toward _him_.

Fucking depth perception.

He took off when his body started to respond to the panic that had instantly shot through him, racing down the side of the pool with Tall Boy in hot pursuit.

Maybe the kids wouldn’t hate Carl as much if he bothered to learn their names.

That wasn’t going to save him now, though, and despite the fact that hindsight was 20-20, Carl’s regular sight was something else entirely since the incident. All of his focus was being funneled into where exactly his feet were landing until Tall Boy started to screech something at him. The class had begun clamoring as soon as the ridiculous chase had broken out, and hell, was it ridiculous. A pimply 6 foot ginger of a bully chasing a scrawny little weirdo with bulging goggles and a fake eye around the high school pool like the fucking Benny Hill theme song should have been playing over the entire ridiculous thing.

The absurdity of the situation sadly did not serve to make it even remotely entertaining for Carl.

“C’mere, Carl, let me borrow your goggles real quick! Be a pal!”

Carl hadn’t exactly known what the plan for his humiliation was when he started to flee, but fear struck his system all over again when if clicked that being caught meant getting his goggles snatched. He hadn’t let anybody look at his eye since the final fitting for his prosthesis, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to change that. The bandaging and gauze had done the trick thus far, even though it wasn’t medically needed anymore. Apparently goggles weren’t up to the task—of scaring people off, that was. Bandaging up half your face was mysterious. It was intimidating. Goggles only seemed to further test the self-control of high schoolers who were physically incapable of not acting like assholes.

At least, that’s how Carl saw it.

To be fair, his vision was a little skewed.

His agility hadn’t taken a hit with the injury and surgeries, however, so he was avoiding Tall Boy’s clutches successfully as the retreat path led him toward the deep end. Carl always had been fast; he’d’ve even gone so far as to say he _liked_ to run. Running for his life (or in this case, his dignity) didn’t seem to hold quite as much appeal as doing it for fun, though.

Carl was entirely too fucking sick of doing anything that could be boiled down to a fight for survival.

That didn’t mean he could stop, though. He had to keep going, pushing, sprinting down the side of the pool with Tall Boy now in not-so-hot pursuit. His legs were longer than Carl’s, but he was undeniably much slower, to the point that it was starting to look embarrassing that he had started this whole thing if he couldn’t finish it. Bullying was only a fun performance for onlookers if the bully was actually good at it. No one wanted to cheer on a guy who was a dick _and_ a slow runner. You didn’t get to be both.

Tall Boy seemed hyper-aware of the socio-political ramifications that accompanied the little display he was putting on here. He picked up his speed out of alarm, adrenaline—desperation. He _had_ to catch Carl now that he had broadcasted his plan for the whole class to hear and then lagged so far behind. The ginger jerk reached deep inside himself and pulled out his best, darting out toward Carl and beginning to close the gap. Carl found it remarkably similar to the moms who could lift a car that was about to crush her kid or whatever, only instead of beautiful maternal instinct, this guy’s surge of energy was motivated by teen worries of ostracization and intrinsic motivation to be an asshole to the kid with the fake eye.

Ah, adolescence.

The luxury of analyzing Tall Boy’s motivations wasn’t really one Carl was being afforded right now. As his pursuant started to gain, he made the split second decision to cut the corner rearing around to the side of the pool with the diving boards. It would only take one step over the corner for Carl to shave a second off his escape, but the aim of a kid with newly destroyed depth perception was not designed to maneuver a pool this fast. You weren’t supposed to run around these things in the first place.

One misstep.

One slip.

One second before he was tumbling into the pool.

The moment he realized just how badly he had fucked up reminded Carl of the old Road Runner cartoons his dad made him watch when he was little, when Wile E. Coyote would run off the cliff and not fall until he looked down to see himself hovering in mid-air. Cartoon gravity wasn’t coming to Carl’s aid as his head collided with the edge of the concrete and he plummeted ungracefully into the water.

Searing pain and confusion were taking turns at overseeing the operations of his brain as his body thrashed uselessly against anything it could. It was just a wall of chemicals and mixing blues, his vision ironically the clearest part of his sensory intake. Carl floundered, vaguely heard the distorted commotion above the surface while he sunk further away from it. Truthfully, he didn’t know which way was up, but the knowledge would have done him a fat lot of good anyway.

For the big shit-fit he had chosen to throw over being denied normal access to a swim class, he probably should have picked his battles better.

Carl didn’t exactly know how to swim.

He figured it would be someone’s job to teach him, (might he be so bold as to suggest, the teacher) and that when he finally got into the pool, his instincts would kind of kick in and keep him from drowning. If not, well, Coach Mueller would be there to make sure he made it out alive, even if he had to dive in just to keep the Grimes family from suing the ever-living-crap out of the school district. Carl’s pride, wounded by the seeming impossibility of adapting to this world post-injury, was willing to risk some mortifying flails in the shallow end as long as it meant he had gotten in the pool like every other student.

Clearly he hadn’t anticipated tripping into the pool and smacking his head on the concrete while Coach Mueller was busy tattling on him to the administration. Though he didn’t know how to himself, Carl’s head was certainly swimming. Did he have a concussion? How the hell was he supposed to know? Was it legal that they didn’t have a lifeguard?

He struggled against the constricting walls of water that surrounded him, panic beginning to really sink in. The idea of drowning didn’t exactly scare him—in fact, it did so much less than it should have—but his body wanted to survive a lot more than the brain that was quickly, albeit clumsily, coming to terms with imminent watery doom. Scrambling for a way to get away from the danger, he sucked in a breath without taking the time to consider his lack of gills.

The influx of fluid into his lungs made Carl’s body panic harder, harsher, and nothing was making sense anymore when his vision blurred in from the corners until all he was processing was teal, or turquoise, or whatever fucking blueish green or greenish blue was reflecting off the tiles, and he couldn’t _breathe_ , couldn’t fucking breathe, and the oxygen currently being deprived from his brain probably wasn’t helping the absolute goddamn befuddlement of his cloudy, murky, useless thoughts.

He was going to die in this pool.

He was going to die in this pool, and that was fine with him. He’d kept the goggles out of the other kids’ grimy hands, and that’s what mattered in the end. More importantly, he wouldn’t have to figure out life with this stupid eye. With all the other horrifying bullshit he had somehow learned to live with over the years, he really wasn’t looking forward to adding this on his plate. It was kind of a win-win situation, if he thought hard enough about it.

No more guilt. No more secrets. No more lies.

No more.

The last thing Carl registered in his mind before the fuzzy teal faded to a fuzzier black was something strong wrapped around his middle, pulling him forcefully in some purposeful direction.

He hoped it was down.


	2. saving

The Peletiers used to have a pool.  

Carl remembered it vaguely as one of those circular, blue, above-ground things sitting smack-dab in the middle of their backyard. The textured bottom resided too close to the surface for the adults to fit comfortably, but the depth demanded enough from Carl for his chin to bob helplessly in attempt to stay above the waterline. Eleven years old and trying to pretend like Sophia wasn’t that much taller by balancing high on his tiptoes, he never managed to fully pretend away the truth. A few inches taller, a year older, and always a lot sweeter, Sophia had seemed to exist at times just for Carl’s mom to decide what he was doing wrong.

“Sophia never talks back to her daddy like that.”

“Carol told me that Sophia cleans her room without being told, isn’t that something, Carl? What a lucky mother that girl has.”

“I’m pretty certain Sophia hasn’t ever gotten a detention, so I don’t have a clue why you’ve already had two this year.”

The comparisons were annoying. Sophia was too perfect. Carl liked her anyway.

Refusing to blame her for those high expectations became easy when he knew the truth. For all of her flawlessness, Sophia was consumed by her singular weakness.

She was always scared.

And Carl, well, he rarely was. The base of his bravery was essential to his reckless and resolute personality. Filling in the rest of the gaps arose out of necessity. Sophia was scared; Carl needed to be confident enough for the both of them. If they found a storm drain opening some sticky July afternoon, he was the one to stick his arm in as far as it would go and dare all those clowns and alligators and sewer monsters and whatever else Sophia was stammering about to grab him, to do their worst. Fear didn’t keep him from doing anything that two imaginative little kids could envision, because Carl knew that without him, Sophia was too caught up in her own head to explore anything at all.

Fourth of July was the last time he had seen her. She wouldn’t have watched the spark and flow of the display in such awe had she been alone. Instead of illuminating her pretty face, the red, white, and blue that lit up the sky would have terrorized her into the open arms of one of Carol’s scratchy sweaters. Returning to the car would have consisted solely of anxious flailing if Carl hadn’t been holding her hand so tightly that she could anchor herself to his determination, even when the dark wasn’t his most favorite, either.

If their childhood seemed quixotically long, too idealistic to picture near-adolescents holding hands in such an innocent exchange of courage, the purity ended up as some kind of cosmic joke. Naiveté had only been extended to make the upset feel more wrong when everything was ripped out from beneath Carl’s feet the day Sophia went missing.

This many years later, he still wondered how scared she had been in the woods without him there to hold her hand. Maybe she had managed to be brave without him for once. Maybe she had picked up her own slack just because no one else was there to do it for her. Maybe she hadn’t needed to be scared when the end was no longer a looming anxiety, but a tangible reality.

Maybe.

But maybe she had been scared all her life for a good reason.

That pool wasn’t in their backyard anymore. 

**» «**

Gasps racked hard against Carl’s chest, eyelids fluttering open to expose the chaotic scene unfolding above. Lights—fluorescent, too bright—shone directly into his good eye. He could almost feel his pupil shrink away from the glare. His whole body seemed to be shrinking away from the confusion in general, but panic set in when he realized the vision and color distortion offered so kindly by his goggles was absent. He hadn’t even pieced together where he was before scrambling to get away, praying to escape once again with his dignity intact. It proved hard to make a break for it when desperate heaving consumed both his lungs and logic. A strong grip curbed the frantic movements of his body and mind, but panic like this could not be effectively discouraged by any amount of constraint. He had to get out of there no matter what.

Coughing quickly mutated into gagging, though, and the demands of the body, as they inevitably would, drowned out the need to please his mind. It _burned_ , Carl realized belatedly. His lungs burned—he could feel it in his fucking esophagus. Whether it was water, bile, or an unappealing cocktail of the two, he couldn’t quite say, but it honestly didn’t really matter when something with a bite like lava was being forcibly expelled from the spasming in his throat. The burning didn’t stop when he could breathe again, either, only dulled to something feasibly tuned out as he sat up a little for liquid to splash against his abdomen and swim shorts.

Whatever had been fighting to get out had thankfully done so, and the gags had become gasps again. He fell back against the ground. Air, _air_ , oxygen—Carl’s lungs needed something to replace the liquid and that awful burning, but the restoration of safety allowed his instincts to come back to the needs of esteem. Everyone who was there, everyone could see his stupid prosthetic eye, could probably zero in on the differences now that the overhead fixtures were forcing his good eye into contraction while the artificial one betrayed its inability to adapt to the changes in light. If his fried nerves would just settle, if his overworked body would just suck it up, if the crushing hold on his upper arm would just  _let go_ —he could run, and pretend this never happened.

Pretend the easy way out of this existence hadn’t just slipped through his fingers.

He still couldn’t pretend the truth away, though.

The muffled voices he had subconsciously been filtering out quickly began to clarify. Chalk it up to the water leaking from his ears or the mental space freed up by his body’s self-purported safety, Carl’s cognition skills kicked in enough to make sense of the deeply rumbled words. It would have been hard not to tune in when one of his particularly vehement attempts to escape was met by a slam back down to the ground.

“Listen, kid,” the voice rasped wearily, “I’m trying to save your life, so if you could show just a little respect and stop trying to wriggle away, I’d appreciate the hell out of it. So _quit_.”

The last word was punctuated by a tightening of the grip on Carl’s arm, and when he was about to fight back, indignant at the prospect of owing someone when he’d never even asked for help, he started to dry heave again. The guy’s free hand, the one without a grip full of scrawny upper arm, slid under Carl’s head, tilting him upward so the efforts to save him hadn’t been wasted on seeing him choke to death on his own sick a few moments later.

“Okay, did anyone see him hit his head?” the man called out, distressed but looking soberly among the students for an answer. “He keeps blowing chunks and his pupils are uneven as all hell. Think he might have a concussion.”

The pool was silent except for the violent retching. Carl was grateful amid the exhaustion in his muscles that this man had pointed him toward the pool when he sat him up. Seeing his classmate’s faces right now would have only compounded the torture of this experience.

“Do I seem like I’m asking for my goddamn health?!” came thundered out all of a sudden. Though Carl’s body was too spent to flinch, he probably would have under normal circumstances. “Now, did he hit his head or not?”

The class appeared both too scared to be silent and too scared to speak up. They were suspended in that indecision for a few seconds; must have felt like forever until someone spoke up. Carl didn’t really recognize the voice, but he was mostly focused on keeping everything down in his stomach.

“I think he might have,” the kid said timidly, “but his- he…”

“Didn’t I send you down to the nurse’s office?” the man demanded, clearly impatient with the hemming and hawing. His fingers absentmindedly curled in the wet locks of Carl’s hair as he held him upright still. Leaning forward, bangs hanging in his face shamefully, Carl got some weird sort of comfort from the touch in his humiliated state.

“N-no, that was-”

“I don’t care who it was!” There must have been just a tad more strength left in Carl because he actually shivered at that shout. “I’m not getting any younger here, am I? Spit it out.”

“One of his eyes is glass,” supplied a different student from the mass of kids shuffling awkwardly in their swimsuits.

“His—it’s _what_?”

All comfort from the gentle cradling evaporated for Carl when suddenly the man was leaning down and crowding his face. “Lemme see… I wanna see...”

Even in his bone-weary state, Carl let a scowl wash over his features, distorting their careful delicacy with his displeasure at this man’s overt lack of manners. Kids acting weird was one thing. Even most of them just stared and whispered rather than trying to grab his goggles. This, though, was a grown-ass man, one Carl recognized from his new upright angle as one of the random teachers he never had for class. A grown-ass man was leaning into his personal space and trying to get a look at his prosthetic like a little kid would. The comparison wasn’t an exaggeration, either; Carl was pretty sure his baby sister had done the exact same thing in hopes of seeing under his bandage when she visited the hospital. He didn’t have Judith giggling in his lap right now, though, and this virtual stranger held none of her charms. Sure, he seemed to maybe have his own brand of charisma. It did take a lot to command a room this easily, and flashing Carl some toothy grin as he tried to cop a look would have made the kid’s breath hitch if breathing hadn’t already been pretty impaired. Somehow all that only served to make this guy even more infuriating.

More humiliation alongside a newfound animosity welled up inside of him with all the burning still regrettably present. Carl did what any sensible person would do in a situation like this.

He reared back slightly and without a second thought, slammed his head into the intruder’s with a loud, satisfying thud.

The second black-out of that day came much more instantly than the first, and if Carl didn’t have a concussion from bouncing his head off the concrete before he slipped, he definitely had one now. 

**» «**

The week following the pool incident was undeniably worse than the actual near-drowning. The swift justice of a public school suspension had just barely missed Carl’s head during his second bout of unconsciousness when one loud-mouthed student made the apt decision to share the part where Carl deliberately head-butted a teacher. Said teacher, who Carl later learned to be called ‘Mr. Negan’, must have gotten some sense knocked into himself and felt some shame over his immature behavior since he apparently assured the administration that Carl’s unfortunate jerk had been somehow tied to the stress of his body and its constant reflexive vomiting. It might not have served as a compelling enough argument for any other student, but the administration opted to go easy on the newly monocular freak who had just almost drowned amid bullying and absent adult supervision. Being the son of a sheriff’s deputy probably earned him some leeway, too.

A suspension would have been just fine to Carl, though. His main concern had never been the school’s consequences, but what hell his mother would rain down on him for the back talk. Thankfully, she had become too fixated on the dangers surrounding her son to be angry about any lip he had given Coach Mueller. The direction of her anger was split evenly between the school (for letting her son almost drown and sustain a concussion) and Carl (for trying to go to swim class in the first place when he obviously wasn’t ready).

“For crying out loud, Carl,” she had huffed, bustling around his room and straightening it up the way she always did when she was masking her fear with displeasure. “You can’t even swim. Are you _trying_ to kill me?”

Carl had just shaken his head dully. It was easier for everyone if he didn’t express his real thoughts when she got like this.

Rick wasn’t so easily mellowed by the scare. His worry usually manifested as a somber lecture, and this time was no different. He knew Coach Mueller a lot better than Carl had anticipated. Predictably, Rick was embarrassed by his son’s insolence, but hearing about it around town was even more mortifying than the offense itself.

“If I ever hear that you swore at a teacher like that again, I’ll…” He floundered feebly for an adequate repercussion to wave around in the boy’s face before ultimately coming up short. “I don’t know what I’ll do. But don’t do it again.”

Carl had nodded, signifying to his dad just as with his mom that no fight remained in him. He probably would do it again, but it didn’t really help anyone to admit that here.

The recovery from a near-death experience and concussion should have been the worst part, but that wasn’t it. The heightened coddling—that’s what made Carl so miserable for the seven consecutive days he spent home at Lori’s behest. Most of that time was doled out to being lecture and unhappily convalescing in his bed, but another good portion was dedicated to sleep. He tried doing homework, he really did, but the concussion made concentrating on even his comic books too difficult to be worthwhile, and he had already come to terms with the fact that he would have to repeat a year, or take summer school at the very least. At this point, between the injury, surgery, healing, and now the concussion, Carl had missed almost an entire quarter of classes. His mom and dad still seemed to be telling themselves that Carl was on the right track, but adulthood in the Grimes family was pretty much synonymous with lying to yourself.

So, he slept. He ate. He fumed, and begrudgingly let his parents treat him like he was Judith’s age.

When he finally returned to school, he was back in bandages. The veil of those wrappings was his new norm, a comfort no matter how much his mom tried to insist that you couldn’t even tell something was different between his uncovered eyes.

She didn’t get it. No one did, which was such a cliché teen thing to think that Carl was nauseated with himself. Clichéd or not, though, the sentiment held true. Both of Lori’s eyes were fine, even pretty. Relatives, strangers, and family friends had all gone out of their way to tell Carl since he was small that his eyes were definitely his father’s: a clear blue, alert, sizing everything up skeptically but still somehow kind. Those who said it meant well, and the comparison was accurate, but the result conditioned Carl to have no real ownership over what seemed to only remind people of his dad. Now that this acrylic prosthetic was taking the right eye’s place, now that it wasn’t even his in the sense that his body had grown it, Carl didn’t want anything to do with that stupid fake eye.

But he didn’t want to put up with rubbernecking from horrified passersby, either. So the bandaging was a compromise.

Whereas the cover of the gauze somehow made him feel normal-ish again, the stupid sunglasses Lori had insisted on him wearing just made him feel—well. Stupid. Despite the over-extended recovery time that her overprotectiveness had provided, Carl’s head did still hurt in the harsh light and harsh noises of the school halls. Though he’d never tell her, by the end of the day, he was glad he had been forced to wear them.

Lori’s safety bubble only extended until her manners began. Carl was permitted, upon her demand, to rest in the nurse’s office during any class all day, but even a brain hemorrhage wouldn’t have absolved him from the one polite favor she asked him that morning to complete, as a “nice boy” and not “some kind of animal.”

That was how Carl ended up knocking on Mr. Negan’s door after school with a sullen look on his face, his weighty backpack threatening to tip him over, and a tin of cookies clutched tight in his hand.

He had waited purposefully until the end of the day, hoping against hope that Mr. Negan had a life or something, would maybe have left already by the time Carl showed up. He had no such luck. It was to be expected, since he never seemed to catch a break anywhere else. That familiar tough luck followed him closely into the very unfamiliar and definitely not empty classroom, urging him to look around despite the shoddy condition of his peripherals. Besides, his top priority was getting in and out as quickly as possible. He entered as soon as Mr. Negan looked up, refusing to wait for permission.

“Hey.”

Carl’s teenage disrespect couldn’t match whatever was wrong this guy, who had either never grown out of adolescence or was just inherently an asshole.

“Are you waltzing into my classroom hungover?” Mr. Negan asked, eyes flicking back down to the papers he had been grading before Carl so boldly demanded attention with his flat greeting. “Because it’s barely 3 PM. You either stayed up way too late drinking or started drinking way too early this morning. It’s kinda badass, don’t get me wrong. I’d totally respect it if you weren’t like…”

He looked up again, scrutinous gaze dragging up and down the kid in front of him once over.

“Twelve? I don’t know. What do you want?”

Somehow, Carl wasn’t surprised at all that rudeness had been the first acknowledgment he received. The annoyance and embarrassment that had made him headbutt this guy in the first place flooded his concussion muddled mind, and Carl narrowed his eyes. Much to his dismay, he immediately remembered that even his good eye was concealed by the dark tint of his sunglasses.

“Don’t project your habits on me,” he bit back so as not to have an awkward pause where the glare would have been were it visible. He couldn’t have this asshole think he was getting anywhere with this whole thing.  “Are _you_ hungover, _Negan_? Sober up and pick up a razor, maybe.”

Even through the obscurance of the black lenses, Carl could see the scruff that framed the man’s face. Unfortunately for Carl, though, letting his focus settle there meant he got an eyeful of yet another shitty grin, just like the one that had filled him with rage last week and hadn’t stopped swimming through his head ever since.

“The hell do you know about shaving, toddler?” The chuckle that accompanied the words was just as aggravating to Carl as everything else. “Who are you to come in here and start dropping my mister, calling me a drunk? Kid, I don’t even know your name.

“I’m Carl,” he answered icily. It didn’t matter if Negan wasn’t really asking. The contrary part of Carl’s personality wouldn’t let himself be forgotten, even by this shit-face.

“Well, _Carl_ ,” Negan drawled just as aggressively. “Last time I checked… I saved your life, got head-butted with an inch of _my_ life for trying to check on your concussion, and then I spared you from suspension, although I guess I didn’t save you from a rock’n’rattled brain if those sunglasses are supposed to tell me you got your eggs scrambled.”

“So what do you want?” Carl interjected, already riled up from the short conversation. Short on his behalf, at least. This guy talked an awful lot. “A medal?”

“How about a little _thank you_?”

The answer was emphatic in its obviousness, though everything this asshole did held an air of emphasis, like Carl was just supposed to keep listening through the huge irritating pauses Negan peppered in. The fluctuating pace and volume had to be on purpose; Negan was testing how much Carl would anticipate and hang onto every word.

Carl hated being tested, so he stepped further into the room and clattered the tin he’d still been holding onto the desk.

“Here’s your thank you,” he scoffed. “It’s from my mom, not from me. I’m not thanking you for anything. I never asked for your help.”

“You were gonna die without my help. “

Carl said nothing, merely stood his ground and crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by the refusal to reply. It felt like an appropriate answer, though—an accurate one—even if he wasn’t explicitly saying anything at all.

“Take off those sunglasses.”

Negan’s voice was instantly quieter and more hoarse than it had been. The challenging smirk present only moments earlier crumbled, pieces of the smugness slipping down his features like a destructive landslide. The regret immediately sunk hard in Carl’s stomach. Damn it. He wasn’t supposed to imply that he wanted to die to a teacher, but the slip up was hardly his fault. Negan didn’t talk like a teacher, didn't look like one, and he certainly didn’t feel like one with the stupidly juvenile power struggle they were caught in, so Carl forgot. Praying it would somehow fix things, he hesitantly did as he was told, slipping off the sunglasses and holding them loosely in his hand. An involuntary wince escaped his throat at the light change, and his head was throbbing, but none of those sensations compared to the intensity of how Negan was looking at him. Carl had never seen so much sadness—not pity, not feeling sorry for—but _sadness_ shining in someone’s eyes like that and aimed right at him.

Negan put his pen down and leaned forward in his desk to get a closer look at Carl.

“You _wanna_ die?”

It didn’t sound like a teacher checking on a student because he had to, not someone wondering tiredly if they had to pick up the phone or write an email to the guidance counselor. Negan wanted to know the real answer, Carl could tell. Something in him was trying to draw that honest answer out, wanted to tell Negan the truth he was asking for—but he didn’t know the real answer himself.

“I wanna know why you saved me,” Carl said eventually. He sounded small. He felt small. Negan’s gaze was suffocating.

They went on just staring like that for a veritable eternity, or maybe five seconds.

Finally, Negan picked his pen back up and returned his attention to the papers on his desk.

“Get out of here, Carl. I don’t have any answers for you.”

Letting his feet override any part of him that screamed ‘stay,’ Carl stumbled out of there in a daze, shoving the sunglasses back on his face and anxiously tightening the straps on his backpack.

**Author's Note:**

> everyone needs yet another version of cegan teacher/student drama, right? i hope so.
> 
> write me a comment or come talk to me on tumblr @ [tealdream](http://tealdream.tumblr.com)! i'm the asshole who makes those shitty cegan ao3 tag memes.


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